Diane Abbott urges culture of compassion in nursing

Diane Abbott, Labour’s shadow public health minister responds to the news that nurses are to be judged on how compassionate they are towards patients under a new strategy to improve care within the health service. She said:

‘We need to see a culture of compassion. But I fear that part of the growing health crisis is the fact that over seven thousand hospital nursing jobs have been axed since David Cameron entered Downing Street, with almost one thousand in the last month alone. This will be increasingly devastating to patient care.

‘There is no doubt about how dedicated the vast majority our nurses are. But there is a debate about whether the recent emphasis on nursing as a graduate profession has meant that the caring aspect has been valued enough. We must make sure there is no question of any nurse being ‘too posh to wash’. For patients and their families, it is the basic nursing skills that matter more than the amount of exams a nurse has taken.’